Connected with the early months of her widowhood, is a wondrous supernatural favour, granted her as if to confirm her late determination, and mark it with a sensible sign of heaven's approval. We shall record it in the words best suited to so sublime a subject,—her own. "On the eve," she says, "of the feast of the Incarnation, 1620, I was on my way to business, which I recommended to God by my ordinary aspiration, 'In thee, O Lord, I have hoped; let me never be confounded!'—when suddenly, my progress was unaccountably arrested, and while I stood motionless in body, the action of my mind was equally suspended, all recollection of the affairs I was engaged in vanishing instantaneously from my memory. Then the eyes of my soul were wondrously opened in one moment, and all the sins, faults and imperfections of my life revealed to me in general and in particular, with indescribable distinctness. At the same time, I saw myself plunged in a bath of blood, and I knew that it was the blood of the Son of God which had been shed for the very sins now so clearly represented to me. If the Almighty in His great goodness had not sustained me, I think I should have died of terror, so horrible did even the smallest sin appear. Oh! what words can express the emotion of the soul at seeing the Lord of infinite goodness and incomprehensible sanctity insulted by a worm of the earth, and a Man-God shedding His most adorable blood to reconcile sinners to His Father! Above all, who can describe her feelings at finding herself personally stained with sin, and recognising that the Incarnate God would have done for the expiation of her individual guilt, what He has done for the atonement of the transgressions of all men in general! At that moment, my heart seemed wholly changed into love for Him who had shown me this signal mercy, and it was filled at the same time with indescribable, and even unimaginable sorrow for having offended Him. This feeling of loving sorrow was so overpowering, that I would willingly have thrown myself into flames, if thus I could have appeased it, and strangest of all, its force was full of gentleness. It sweetly bound my soul by its very charms, and led her on a willing captive. A strong interior impulse urged me to confess my sins, and on returning to my usual condition, I found myself standing opposite the little church of the Feuillants who had lately established themselves at Tours. I entered, and seeing one of the Fathers standing in the middle of the chapel as if he had been expecting my arrival, I on the spot confessed the sins which had just been discovered to me, too intent on making reparation to Him whom I had offended, to notice that I might easily have been overheard by a lady who had entered the church in the meantime. When I had finished, the Father gently told me to return the next day to his confessional, and I left without observing at the moment that I had not received absolution. This omission was supplied at my renewed confession next morning. During the first year that I remained under the direction of this Father, I confined myself entirely to the accusation of my sins, thinking that nothing else should be introduced at confession, but having heard a pious girl say that it was not right to practise corporal austerities without permission from the confessor, I applied for it to mine, and he then regulated the amount of these, as well as the number of my confessions and communions. I returned home, changed into another creature, and that so completely, that I no longer recognised myself. I discovered with unmistakable clearness the ignorance under cover of which I had hitherto thought myself very innocent, my conduct very harmless, and my whole spiritual condition blameless. After our Lord had opened my eyes, I saw myself as I was, and I had to own that my justice was but iniquity."
She always looked on this heavenly favour as one of the greatest she had ever received, and its date as synonymous with that of her perfect conversion to God. "It would be difficult," says her son, "to lead a more exemplary life than hers had been; by the word conversion, we are not then to understand, a transition from a state of sin to a state of grace, but a resolute determination to bid adieu wholly to the world, that she might give herself all to God and live only by His love." To mark her entire separation from the world, she assumed a peculiarly grave style of dress, dismissed her servants, gave up her house, and returned to her father's, where free from all care arid responsibility, she found herself as she desired, alone with God alone. She chose an apartment in the upper story as the most retired, and between this and the adjoining oratory, she passed most of her time in prayer. She was never to be seen except at church or at home; paid no visits and received very few; spoke but rarely, and then concisely. She took her frugal meals at her father's table, then retired to her solitude, as she says herself, "like the dove to its nest." It was at this time, that in addition to her other most severe austerities, she gave up the use of linen, substituting serge. Knowing the danger of inaction, she occupied the intervals between prayer in embroidery, choosing this employment because it left the mind free to converse with her Lord. But although her life was thus hidden in God, it was no part of her piety to forget the interests of her neighbour. In her present straitened circumstances, she could no longer open her hand in alms as had been her wont in better days, but the sick poor retained their old place in her heart, and among these she still could always find ample exercise for her charity. Accordingly, she sought out the most revolting cases of disease, and made appointments with the sufferers to meet her at her home, where kneeling before them while they sat, she washed and dressed their loathsome sores, contriving to stoop closely over their ulcerated limbs, so that nature might be crucified in every sense, and crushed in every feeling. And as the soul's interests are more precious far than those of the miserable body, so was it her chief concern to instruct the ignorant, to encourage the weak, to rouse the sinful to repentance, and animate the good to higher virtue. Thus passed the first year of her widowhood: at its close, the tenor of her life was altered, that in a new sphere, she might have the opportunity o£ practising new virtues.
CHAPTER IV.
PURITY OF SOUL.—LIFE OF HUMILIATION IN HER SISTER'S HOUSE.
It would seem as if the holy widow had now attained the very position for which her heart had so long sighed, a life of close and constant communion with God, and, at the same time, of active charity to her neighbour,—a life combining every facility for her own sanctification, with abundant opportunities of promoting the salvation of other souls also. But scarcely had she realized its advantages and tasted its sweetness, when at the end of one short year, she was called on to relinquish it, by a married sister, who, knowing her talent for business, begged her assistance in the management of a large commercial establishment of her own. The proposal was naturally most distasteful, but seeing in it a road to the suffering and humiliation for which her soul thirsted, as well as an opportunity of practising her favourite charity, she made the sacrifice in her spirit of habitual self- immolation, only stipulating for freedom in her spiritual exercises, and permission, to return home every evening. Our Lord was pleased to mark His approval of her decision, and to reward her generosity, by raising her to a higher degree of prayer.
This partial return to the world suggested the idea that she might now perhaps be induced to accede to the unanimous wish of her friends, and engage once more in married life. The subject was therefore before long renewed, and one day she was so hard pressed with a variety of arguments connected with the interests of her son, that she paused a little to consider whether the opinions of so many wise and disinterested advisers ought not to weigh somewhat against her own lights. The hesitation was only momentary, and yet on reflection, it seemed to her to have involved so serious an infidelity, that in subsequent general confessions of the greatest sins of her life, she ranked this first, as the one most deserving of her regret, and the possible cause of her severe interior sufferings. She knew that in its own nature, the fault in question was inconsiderable, but she understood equally well that its attendant circumstances gave it a certain degree of gravity for her, whom the Almighty had so favoured. Short as her hesitation had been, it appeared like disloyalty to Him whom she had promised to take for her only Spouse should the bonds of her earthly union be ever broken, and that with her capability of appreciating the sublimity of a vocation to a life with God alone, she should have deliberated for an instant between His invitation and that of the world, seemed to her a fitting subject of life-long sorrow and self-condemnation. The infidelity to grace was aggravated in her estimation by its accompanying ingratitude, and this in itself was a reproach, keenly painful to a heart so tender and loving as hers.
Here again, we are struck with wonder and admiration at her purity of conscience, and here again we breathe a prayer for light to see ourselves as God sees us; for grace to understand the malice of sin as the saints understand it. It is because their hearts are so pure, that the spiritual vision of the saints is so refined. "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they see God" and in the light of that eternal Sun of Justice, they discern minutest stains, invisible to souls obscured by the clouds of sin, or dimmed by the mists of self-love. Again, it is because the hearts of the saints are so pure, that their love of God is so sensitive. "Blessed are the clean of heart," for they see the Divine attractions as clearly as is given to man in his mortality, and seeing them thus clearly, every slight infidelity to a God so beautiful and so good, assumes importance in their eyes, and excites a corresponding sorrow. The young widow's momentary irresolution left her only the more firmly determined to renounce the world at once and for ever, and in order to render that resolution irrevocable, she bound herself to, God by a vow of perpetual chastity, being then twenty-one years of age. About this time she was placed under the spiritual care of the Reverend Father Dom Raymond of St. Bernard, and to this enlightened master she was first indebted for the great blessing of regular direction in the paths of the interior life.
Her position in her sister's house was unaccountably strange. She had been invited there, because her clear intellect, sound judgment, and natural aptitude for business promised to render her an invaluable assistant in the management of a large concern, and yet, instead of being at once placed in her own sphere at the head of the family, she was permitted without question or remonstrance to establish her quarters in the kitchen, as if considered suited only for menial work;—treated meantime in the most imperious manner, not only by the master and mistress of the house, but by the very servants; looked down on by all, as if she had been not even a stranger or a hireling, but an outcast. The Spirit of God inspired her, she says, to conceal her natural abilities, that she might pass for an ignorant woman, fit only to wait on the servants, and this lowly condition had such powerful charms for her humble heart, that she actually feared excess in her attachment to it. In proposing this apprehension as a conscientious doubt to her director, her great fear was that he would oblige her to emerge from her abject position, and assume her rightful place in the family.
Her insatiable desire of crosses and humiliations was not satisfied even with the ingratitude of her brother and sister, nor with the insolent behaviour of the domestics; she sought for new sufferings, and among others, contrived to burn herself while employed in cooking. She attended the servants in sickness, reserving the whole care of them to herself, and voluntarily rendering them the lowest services. Among other instances of the kind, she at one time dressed the infected wound of a workman whose foot had been nearly severed in two by a terrible accident, and whose deplorable condition rendered him absolutely unapproachable to all but herself. Although gangrene threatened, and amputation seemed inevitable, she persevered in her work of mercy and self-denial, until she bad effected a cure. Her brother and sister, she looked on as her best benefactors, accepting their unkindness as the greatest of favours, and obeying their directions with scrupulous exactitude, and this life she led, and this death to self she practised, not for a week, or a month, but for three or four successive years. Oh! how richly traced in heaven's own colouring, must have been the daily record of those years kept by her faithful guardian spirit! How mighty the change wrought in her spiritual condition, as one after another they passed away, each leaving behind an accumulation of grace made fruitful; each marked by new, and always more wondrous supernatural favours! It is not, however, by her supernatural favours that we are to estimate her sanctity, but by her practice of solid virtue, nor are we to forget that if by an exceptional vocation, she was led into the higher paths of the mystic life, she walked long, steadily and to the end in the common road, to which, as Christians, we are called no less than she was. Nevertheless, that singular favours should have been granted her, is exactly what we should have been, led to expect from our acquaintance with the history of the saints, which has taught us that it is ever God's way to be liberal with His creatures, in proportion as they are liberal with him. There had been no rapine in the holocaust of this, His faithful servant. She had never refused Him one gift He craved; withheld one sacrifice He asked; was He to be outdone in generosity? Oh, far from it! In presence of the magnificence of His gifts to her chosen soul, we have but to bow down as we bend before the sun when its ray dazzles us. The reverential wonder which they inspire, is, after all, but a homage to the great Giver, and if while we admire and venerate her exceptional privileges, we at the same time study and try to copy the imitable portions of her example, we shall reap profit from both passages of her life.